Introduction
The term “hate
crime” is a relatively new term, though bias-motivated crime
has a much longer history. Advocates who were addressing violent crime in the
United States that targeted African Americans, Asian Americans, and Jewish
Americans in the 1980s are believed to have coined the term. Since the coining of
the term, federal and state governments, as well as social scientists, have made
efforts to formally define hate crimes for the purposes of collecting statistics
and improving law-enforcement and prevention efforts.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines a hate crime as a “a criminal
offense against a person, property or property motivated in whole or in part by
the offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or
ethnicity/national origin.” However, complete agreement on what constitutes a hate
crime has not been reached.
In the past, although these criminal acts could be prosecuted, the punishment
did not include a consideration of the bias motivating the crime. Thus, painting a
swastika on the door of a Jewish person’s home was considered a crime because the
graffiti defaced property and a law existed against vandalism, but not because the
act was done to intimidate the resident. Hate crime laws allow the psychological
harm done to a victim to be factored into the determination of whether any special
sanctions should occur. Research has suggested that the victim of a hate crime
experiences more harm than does the victim of a similar crime not motivated by
bias or hate. In 2009, the United States Congress passed the Matthew Shepard and
James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which provides federal funding and
assistance to state, local, and tribal jurisdictions to assist in the
investigation and prosecution of hate crimes. The law also created a new federal
criminal law that criminalizes causing bodily injury when the crime was committed
because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin of
any person, or when the crime was committed because of the actual or perceived
religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or
disability of any person and the crime affected interstate or foreign commerce or
occurred with federal special maritime and territorial jurisdictions. The law
removed the requirement that the victim be engaged in a federally protected
activity, such as voting or attending a public school, at the time of the crime.
The law is named after Matthew Shepard and James Byrd
Jr., who were both victims of violent hate crimes in 1998 in
US states that had no existing hate crime laws at the time.
Causes
The central cause of these crimes is hate, which most often is the result of fear,
anger, and ignorance. Hate crimes are acts of bias, bigotry, and intolerance
toward an identified group. Though individuals and small groups may be the actual
victims, the ultimate target of the perpetrators is the group to which the victims
belong. For example, a hate crime offender may target and beat a black man in
order to intimidate all African Americans in the community. Perpetrators of hate
crimes seek to terrorize the larger group by criminal acts against its members.
The beliefs and prejudices held by hate crime offenders are learned and can go
back for generations.
Perpetrators develop an “us-versus-them” outlook, in which they hold that their
own group is superior and correct in its view and that the other group is
inferior. The other group’s members may be seen as interlopers. In addition, they
may be made the scapegoats for what is perceived to be wrong in a society. In this
way, the other group is made responsible for economic problems, crime, and the
other ills of society. Often when an identifiable group migrates into an area
(community, state, or country), the resident group sees the immigrants as a drain
on—or competitor for—the available resources and views their removal as the only
solution. Research indicates that some of the most extreme biased responses are
sparked by a perceived threat to the cultural integrity of the perpetrators'
ingroup by members of an outgroup.
Typically, a hate group or hate crime perpetrator does not know much about the
identified group. In fact, the less people know about an identified outgroup, the
stronger their prejudices will be. Social psychology research has identified a
phenomenon known as the "outgroup homogeneity effect," by which people tend to see
members of groups that they are not apart of as more homogenous than members of
their own group, empowering stereotypes and leading to deindividuation of outgroup members.
Researchers Jack McDevitt, Jack Levin, and Susan Bennett, in a 2002 study
published in the Journal of Social Issues, classified hate time
offenders into four categories based on the psychological and situational factors
that led to hate crimes: thrill-seeking perpetrators are motivated by a desire for
excitement and power; defensive perpetrators are motivated by protecting their
community from perceived outsiders; retaliatory perpetrators commit violence in
response to a real or perceived hate crime against their own group by members of
the target group; and missionary perpetrators are typically members of hate groups
who are deeply motivated by bigotry and see it as their "mission" to intimidate or
eliminate the other group. These categories are widely used by law enforcement
officers in the investigation and identification of hate crimes. Thrill-seeking is
thought to be the most common motivation for hate crime offenders.
Victims and Offenders
Potential hate crime victims are those who are or are thought to be members of an
identifiable group. These victims differ from victims of random crimes in that
hate crime victims are specifically selected as a crime target due to their race,
ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or
disability. They were not victimized for what they were doing or what they had in
their possession, but for what and who they are. Consequently, these victims
cannot alter their behaviors to protect themselves from possible future
attacks.
While all violent crime puts victims at risk for psychological distress, victims
of violent hate crimes are even more likely to suffer from depression,
anxiety, anger, and posttraumatic stress
disorder than victims of comparable violent crimes that are
not motivated by bias and hate. Furthermore, hate crimes send a message to all
members of a given group that their neighborhood, school, workplace, or community
is hostile and dangerous to them. Hate crimes victimize not only the targeted
individuals but members of their group at large. Members of the targeted group may
experience psychological distress, heightened anxiety, and lowered
self-esteem.
In the United States, the most frequent profile of a hate crime offender is a
young white man, usually one who has low self-esteem and is socially isolated.
Research demonstrates that the perpetrators of hate crimes also demonstrate
above-average levels of aggression and antisocial behavior. However, most
offenders do not have a diagnosable psychopathology. Alcohol and drug use can
contribute to their behavior. Other characteristics of offenders include a history
of abuse and of witnessing violence used as a coping method.
These hate crime offenders hold stereotypical beliefs that cause them to view the
entire identified group as a threat. Out of their need for belonging, they may be
attracted to hate groups, where people share their beliefs. Though less than 10
percent of the reported hate crimes are committed by members of organized hate
groups, these groups can produce splinter groups or influence individuals who come
in contact with them. Areas where there are high levels of hate-group activity and
membership typically report higher numbers of hate crimes.
Offenders may plan their crimes over a period of time or act spontaneously on
finding a target. However, there is a strong premeditated component to hate crimes
compared to other criminal offenses. People who commit hate crimes are more likely
to deliberate on and plan their attacks than the perpetrators of nonbias-related
crimes, and some may even travel long distances to seek out members of their
targeted group. Though their crimes may appear irrational to most people, the
perpetrators see them as logical and defensible, the natural result of the
cultural climate that fostered the hate ideology.
Hate Crime Statistics
According to FBI statistics, there were 5,796 reported hate crime incidents
involving 6,718 criminal offenses in the United States in 2012. Approximately 49
percent of these hate crimes were racially motivated, with 66 percent of racially
motivated hate crimes involving anti-black bias, 22 percent involving anti-white
bias, 4 percent involving anti-Asian/Pacific Islander bias, and 3 percent
involving anti–American Indian bias. The next most common types of hate crimes, in
descending order, were motivated by bias against sexual orientation (19 percent),
religion (19 percent), ethnicity or nationality (12 percent), and disability (1.5
percent). Nearly 60 percent of all hate crimes motivated by ethnicity or
nationality bias targeted Hispanic and Latino individuals.
Of the 6,718 hate crime offenses reported in 2012, nearly 60 percent involved
crimes against persons and 38 percent involved crimes against property.
Approximately 28 percent of all reported hate crime offenses in 2012 involved
property damages and vandalism, 23 percent involved simple assault, 22 percent
involved intimidation, and 12 percent involved aggravated assault.
Of the 5,331 hate crime offenders whose race was reported in 2012, approximately
55 percent were white, 23 percent were black, 9 percent were groups made up of
individuals of various races, 0.9 percent were Asian or Pacific Islander, and 0.9
percent were American Indian.
The majority of victims of antireligious hate crimes were Jewish (62 percent),
followed by Muslims (12 percent), Catholics (6 percent), Protestants (3 percent),
and atheists or agnostics (0.9 percent). Of the individuals targeted due the
offender's bias against disability, approximately 80 percent were targeted due to
mental disability and 20 percent were targeted due to physical disability.
Hate Crime versus Terrorism
When compared, hate crimes and terrorist acts share many of the same
characteristics. They are acts of intimidation, acts against an identifiable
group, and attempts to send a message of hostility and induce fear. However,
terrorism tends to be national or international in scope and to be better
organized and planned than most hate crimes. Terrorists tend to seek large
gatherings with many potential victims, partly because of the greater expected
media coverage. Terrorists also tend to have political motives and often seek the
removal of the targeted group, particularly if it is a government group or
occupying force. Some theorists have argued that terrorism is an "upward crime,"
in which a perpetrator of lower social standing targets members of the majority or
the dominant group in society, whereas hate crimes are largely committed by
members of the dominant group against members of minority groups.
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